Over the past century the Oregon coast has undergone several periods of major coastal erosion in which the mean shoreline position moved landward, encroaching on homes built atop dunes and coastal bluffs and sometimes even destroying homes.

To understand the effects (erosion or accretion) of storms, particularly during major El Niños, and to improve our understanding of long-term coastal change due to sea level rise and climate change, staff from the Newport Coastal Field Office of the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI), maintain the Oregon Beach and Shoreline Mapping Analysis Program (OBSMAP) to document the spatial variability of beach change at various time-scales (i.e. seasonal, multi-year and long-term changes). The purpose of this work is to provide high-quality scientific information of the changing face of the Oregon coast, which can meet the needs of coastal managers, city and county planners, the geotechnical community, and the public-at-large.

Open-File Report O-13-07 describes the results of an expansion to the OBSMAP program, which now includes new GPS and lidar observational data derived for three areas on the southern Oregon coast (Gold Beach, Rogue Shores, and Nesika Beach) and one new network on the northern Oregon coast along the Netarts littoral cell in Tillamook County.

The development of OBSMAP has been achieved through collaborative efforts as part of the development of the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing System (NANOOS), Coastal Management Program (OCMP) of the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development, the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department (OPRD), the Washington Department of Ecology, and Oregon State University. Funding for the O-13-07 report was provided by the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) through its Coastal Management Program (#PS09005).

To read the executive summary from the 47-page report, visit:http://www.oregongeology.org/pubs/ofr/p-O-13-07.htm